I don’t make predictions on politics, but doesn’t it always begin this way:

“I have no desire to do anything other than remain prime minister of my country and leader of my party for as long as the Australian people want that to be the case,” Mr Howard said on Sky News.

It certainly would be sweet to see Howard ditched as leader before the election, and then have Rudd defeat Costello or even better Abbott. That would make for some Christmas present!

It was interesting to see Abbott on Lateline, reluctantly conceeding that perhaps the electorate was getting a bit tired of Howard/Costello/Downer. Let’s get this straight Tony, we hate the lot of you, “a bit tired” would have to be the understatement of the freakin century.

We’re now the proud owners of a fancy looking fridge, woohoo! It is a few years old apparently, but it’s still in very good nick and so WHITE. Seems to keep the food cool too!

Only problem is it makes the rest of the house look like a dive …

Many thanks to Bje and Lisa for the fridge, Dave for a lend of his trailer, and mum and dad for the towing mobile.

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Just a few pics from a few weeks back, when Meg and I rode up Mt Stromlo.

Nice way to spend a sunny autumn afternoon, and get 50 odd kms on the clock as well!

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Meg in the “fading light”

Meg and I climbed Mt Tennant for a laugh sometime back in April.

I hadn’t done it for a while, and Meg never had, so it seemed like an obvious choice for a bit of a hill climb.

The weather was seriously hot despite it being mid-Autumn, in the end we didn’t have as much water as we’d have liked. Still it was a beautiful day, and once we got to the top the views were excellent.

I did a Mt Tennant über panorama, full size version is best.

We were a little late getting going in the morning, in fact I think we started walking about 1pm – so on the walk down the light was “fading a little”. But, we’d come prepared, so we just donned the headtorches and kept walking.

Another top little outing.

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About a week after I got back from Japan and Germany we had the “annual” Ellerman family Snowy Mountains weekend .. for the first time in about five years.

Meg came along too, making it the Inaugural “annual” extended Ellerman family Snowy Mountains weekend.

The original plan was to do a hike and camp somewhere up in the mountains, but that sort of seemed a bit like hard work, and we ended up renting a nice house in East Jindabyne. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but had a great view and was pretty cosy and nice.

We drove up Friday arvo – mum, dad and Ange drove up during the day through the mountains. Sunset over the snowies was really speccy, and the weather looked promising.

Saturday we woke up to a bit of sun, but ominous looking clouds over the mountains. The plan was to do the Lakes walk, but the weather at Charlotte pass quickly ended that idea – solid rain, cold, and windy. We headed over to Thredbo, but the weather wasn’t any better – although the Mountain bike race was still going on, poor suckers.

Cups of tea and scrabble called, and the house really came in handy. Mid afternoon the weather letup a little and we had a short walk along the lake – it’s quite surreal with the water level so low.

The rain returned so we started watching a DVD. The tele kept freaking out and showing fuzz, so eventually we gave up. Not long after the power to the whole suburb went out completely. About 6pm we figured we’d better head out and get some candles in preparation for a dark night – but not long after we got back from the servo the power came back.

As it turned out the TV’s problems were something to do with the impending blackout, so we ended up watching the really quite bad “The Day After Tomorrow”. As with most American films, it had some potential, an interesting premise and great visuals, but had to include a ridiculous heart-rending plot, full of tearful reunions etc. – crap basically.

On Sunday the weather was a bit better, and we had to leave the house anyway, so we headed up to Thredbo for a walk of some sort. We thought about the Kosciuszko walk, but the cloud was too low, so we did the Dead Horse Gap walk instead.

It wasn’t too cold up top, and the weather got rapidly better as we descended, so it ended up being a fairly pleasant walk in the end. But next time we really must do the Lakes walk!

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Jeremy and I found ourself in Böblingen on a Sunday with not much to do. The last time that happened we walked off into the forest, only to get lost and nearly die, I swear.

Instead we worked out how to buy all-day train tickets and spent the day touring around the place.

First we got the train down to Tübingen, eventhough we’d been there before. It was nice to get a bit longer to walk around and check it out, it really is a lovely little city. I guess it’s hard to say, but it seems like somewhere I could live for sure.

We climbed up a hill and found a flying fox. On the other side of the hill there was a couple of para-gliders trying to catch the wind. We watched them for a while but the wind never quite got the guts up to lift them off. One of them tried to lift off and got a few metres up before coming back down again – all a bit hairy.

Later in the arvo we grabbed another train to Plochingen. We were going to get off and have a look but it was a bit late, so we stayed on ’til Stuttgart hauptbahnhof. From there we took the U-bahn up the hill to the Fernsehturm again, this time for the sunset.

The view from the top was seriously speccy, and only got better as the sun went down. I made an über panorama, try the full size version and scroll right to see it in all its glory.

To end the day we got the train from Feursee back to Böblingen, and had a beer in what must be the only Spanish-themed bar in town. It was pretty cool though, we must spend a bit more time there next time we’re around.

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While in Germany I finally managed to catch up with the infamous Daniel.

Jeremy and I headed into Stuttgart and after getting a bit lost, found our way to Daniel’s cute little apartment.

As it turned out he wasn’t home yet, he was expecting dodgy late Australians, and we would have been if not for the overly efficient German train system which got us there early. We met his housemate and waited a few minutes checking out his place, no drama.

Those of you who know Daniel will be glad to hear he’s hardly changed a bit. It was kinda strange catching up after a couple of years, a lot has happened, I guess we’ve grown up just a touch – but it was nice how easy it was to slip back into hanging out, just like we used to back in Scrivener St, and when I visited in 2004.

Daniel cooked us one of his favourites, pasta with gorgonzola, which was a nice change from all the meat we’d been having. Afterward we headed into town to have a look around, and grab a couple of beers at a funky little bar about the size of a bus stop. Good fun.

I didn’t take too many good photos, we were too busy chatting – but there’s a couple that are OK.

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After flying all Saturday from Tokyo to Stuttgart we woke up to a sunny Sonntag in Stuttgart.

We bumped into Luke and André at the hotel, and headed into Stuttgart proper with them to just sort of hang around. We walked a bit and took a few pics, then settled in for some solid beer and pizza at the schlossplatz.

Later in the arvo we got enthusiastic and walked southish up a hill to catch a view. We were going to get icecream but the queue was insane. Eventually we headed back to the platz for a coffee in the rapidly cooling evening. A really nice chill out day.

Sometime midweek Arnd drove Jeremy, André and I up to the Fernsehturm. The view was awesome, I did a panorama which I really like. It was pretty chilly generally, but 150 metres above the ground it was really chilly. Brrrrrrr.

I also headed out one night with Christian to a rockclimbing place in town. It was this insanely busy tiny little gym, with some really great routes. They even let you lead climb, it was awesome. I hadn’t been climbing for a while, but I wasn’t too terrible. I did a couple of nice routes, but backed off a few times before piking on a massively overhanging lead route, it was good practice for backing off on lead at least

Afterward we had a few beers at the gym (rock!), and then headed to the Oblomov for another. Unfortunately we made a minor timing mistake and I missed the last train back to Böblingen – the train workers at the station thought it was very funny when I asked in bad German “the train didn’t just leave did it”, oops.

But if you’re stuck in Stuttgart overnight there’s not much to do other than go back to the pub, which isn’t all bad! Sometime in the wee hours we headed back to Christian’s apartment, where we needed to break in due to a lack of keys, except we couldn’t manage it – so we ended up waking up his housemate instead, sorry!

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After hanging in Japan I flew to Germany. Unfortunately there’s only two ways to get from Tokyo to Stuttgart. One is via HEL, which in February I thought might be a recipe for getting snowed-in, and the other is via hell. OK it’s not that bad, but after my last experience I was wary.

The fun part is you get to fly over Russia, which if you think about it is completely insane. Forty odd years ago you’d have been in a U2 getting shot down. Even if Russia has friendly skies I’m still not sure I’d like to land, it looks pretty freakin inhospitable down there.

In the end the flight was pretty good, and I didn’t get stuck for two days at Heathrow, which was nice. A taxi ride later and we were being offered schnapps at the lovely Hotel Böhler.

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Back in February I headed to Japan for ten days or so. I had my nose to the
grind stone most of the time, but I got to see a little bit of the place.

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of greater Tokyo, it’s certainly amazing, but there’s not really enough swathes of bushland for my liking. There’s just buildings everywhere, it’s insane!

The overarching feeling I had while there was that I was foreign. Not because people were nasty to me or anything, but just because I didn’t get it, I didn’t fit in on every level. That’s not a bad way to feel every now and then, it certainly cuts you down to size a bit.

The folks at work who looked after me were wonderful, really hospitable and friendly. We had great lunches everyday at the work cafeteria, with me generally saying “what’s that?” a lot. It was all pretty good though.

We headed to a proper fancy restaurant one night, for Sushi and Sashmi, which was really awesome. There was really cold excellent beer all round and the food was all beautifully fresh. And it was great to sit around a joke with everyone, a really friendly atmosphere.

On my last night we went to a BBQ place, where you have a little grill in your table and you just cook the meat there and then. It was incredible, probably some of the tastiest meat I’ve ever eaten without a doubt. I must see if there’s such a place in Sydney sometime.

I had a pretty decent view of Fuji-san from the office on a good day, sure would like to climb it one day.

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